Techization

A huge hurdle has been jumped for e-textbooks and open source instructional resources.  California held an open ‘e-textbook compeition’ for any company to submit new instructional resources for the state.  The submissions were analyzed against California’s standards for their public education system and rated for their content.

A non-profit organization named CK-12 won the competition which is a recent upstart company with an incredibly small staff.  CK-12 wen’t up against major publishers looking to land a major contract with the state of California.  Of the 16 free digital textbooks for high school math and science reviewed, ten meet at least 90 percent of California’s standards. Four meet 100 percent of standards.’ Three of those recognized as 100% aligned to California standards were from CK-12 and one from H. Jerome Keisler.

What makes this hurdle so huge is that CK-12 is not a major publisher and focuses on open source information and sources.  Their texts are combined information for multiple sources and not a short list of authors.  Similar to ‘Wikipedia’ in a textbook format.  This showcases the power of open source information and California’s commitment to e-readers to deliver this content.

E-Textbooks Offer

• Fast content turn-around.  No need for new print editions which when shipped can contain content that is up to 2 years old. Content can be edited literally overnight and kept up-to-date.
• Content can be made more interactive and media rich via hyperlinks, high-resolution color graphics and other engaging content

This is a huge win for e-textbooks and open source content for instructional material.  It is my hope that universities will begin initialising similar programs for their students with the University of Wisconsin-Stout being a prime candidate test this new technology.

On the heels of the Kindle 2, Amazon announced pre-order sales on another version of their popular e-reader.  This new piece of hardware will be known as the Kindle DX.

The Kindle DX display screen is 2.5 times larger than the Kindle 2, 9.7″ diagonally to be exact.  The reason for the larger screen is to accommodate full pages of text. (10.5″ x 7″)  The Kindle DX boasts a screen resolution of 1,200 x 824 pixels which rivals some smaller laptop displays

As a current college student, I know the high costs and trouble academic textbooks can bring.  Friends of mine often have as many as eight different academic texts.  I just picked up some of my roommates textbooks here in our room, many are 800-1200 pages long and weigh anywhere from 4.2 lbs to 6.5 lbs.  Now stick three or four large textbooks plus a laptop and you have some serious weight on your back!   I’m sure many health care professionals would love to see an e-reader replace textbooks, especially if they filter to younger school children.

What is really interesting and promising for Amazon is the heightened interest from universities across the country.  Amazon already has a test pilot program setup at Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, the University of Virginia and Pace university.  Students and faculty will be issued a new Kindle DX next fall with no increase in tuition or other fees.

The positive impact for academic institutions is clear.  Obvious benefits for the student, less costs in production and transporting of texts and a much greener impact on our environment

“Our interest in the pilot is to provide Amazon and other vendors with information on what our students and faculty need in such devices to make them successful,” said Serge Goldstein, associate CIO and director of academic services at Princeton. “The ability to deliver textbooks in a format that doesn’t require paper is probably inevitable.”

These universities are early adopters who will get to see first hand how e-readers could work in an academic environment.  I feel the Kindle DX could work quite well.  However, it is not perfect.

E-readers may not fit well with science courses like biology or chemistry.  Science texts are often filled with vivid graphics that are crucial supplements to the text.  A black and white e-reader like the Kindle DX would not do well in that situation.  We are just on the tip of the iceberg.  These e-readers will continue to get smaller, lighter and even more impressive with their capabilities.  High resolutions color display readers are able to be produced, but the cost to produce them is unrealistic to roll out in large quantities.  Costs will come down and improvements will be suggested as these pilot programs are completed around the country.

It is my belief e-readers like the Kindle DX will become standard on college campuses nationwide in the future.  It will take some time for profitable models to be developed and buy-in from universities and students alike.  However, this shift is inevitable in my strong opinion.

Rupert Murdoch, a powerful force in media.  He went on capitol hill this week to talk about the future of journalism.  What I learned after watching the proceedings on CNN.com, he still just doesn’t get it.  Though he is a major investor in the Internet, he really doesn’t under the transition we are in the midst of.  This new thing being quickly branded as the ‘interactive’ web vs. the old ‘read-only’ web from the 1990′s. 

Rupert Murdoch felt it was a good idea to attack Google on capitol hill by saying, “Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?  Thanks, but no thanks” said Murdoch. 

Some have suggested to ease on looking at Murdoch as a ‘media dinosaur’, I would have to disagree.  Someone else’s biography of Murdoch will not change my opinion on his business decisions and statements on important stages. 

Google is the aggregator for news, I mean Google runs the world right?  With the newspaper industry fallinginto bankruptcy literally everyday, Murdoch is looking to latch onto the pockets of a giant and slap their hands until they give up some of their grip or money.  I doubt Google will do either! 

Murdoch should know that he can easily stop Google crawlers from indexing his newspapers webpages, it is a simple line of text in his robots.txt file instructing Google not to index the page.  Sounds so simple right?  Not so fast.

If Murdoch were to stop having Google index his newspapers, suddenly the Wall Street Journal disappears but his competition is still readily indexing with Google.   Therefore, that percentage of the demographic that uses Google News (and it is quite large) will just click through to his competitors.  Readers don’t care about who they get it from, they want it now and they want content that is easy to find. 

That is why Murdoch won’t do anything until he can get the entire industry to follow.  The common ‘one goes against, he fails.  One gets everyone to go against they prevail’ kind of perspective. 

It comes down to this Rupert.  You need to deliver to the expectations of consumers.  Downward spiralling reporting and absolutely rigid non-conformity to trends in the industry and now you want to complain.  What were you doing five years ago?   Consumers will not pay for dribble, especially since you can find it through out millions of pages on the Internet.  The newspaper’s in this country need to radically restructure under new business models or force certain death in the long-run. 

And yes, that includes restructuring their content and methods of delivery!

Evaluate, re-structure or face certain death!  (cheesy accent)

It is no secret that the newspaper industry is struggling right now.  The latest data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations shows the average daily circulation of U.S. newspapers declined 7% in the last six months ending March 31st, 2009.  Many were hopeful this data would suggest leveling off or at least a slower rate of decline.

Among 395 daily U.S. newspapers, the average circulation totaled 34.4 million, compared with a total of 37.1 million in the March 2008 reporting period, according to preliminary figures, the ABC said.

Some of the biggest losers during the past 6 months (circulation) include:

• New York Post -  down 21%
• Atlanta Journal Constitution – down 20%
• Newark Star-Ledger – down 17%
• San Francisco Chronicle – down 16%
• Boston Globe – down 14%

Both the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle are being threatened by their parent companies with the possibility of closure unless drastic cuts are made.

The Wall Street Journal reported it was the only one of the 25 largest daily newspapers in the country to post an increase in daily circulation for the period, with a 0.6 percent gain.

What Do Newspapers Do Well?

This discussion came up in my mass communications course this semester, what do newspapers do better than any other media source?  The resounding answer from the class was local coverage.  Newspapers are very involved in local government and smaller stories within their communities compared to television stations and radio.  However, I would argue that very aggressive ‘citizen journalist’ bloggers could challenge them for that crown, but blogging is just that…blogging.

Some suggest that newspapers allow for a stronger more conscious thinking that dives deeper than your able to through a digital medium.  They cite your brain is constantly distracted by the other potential information you could find online, with the Internet there is no beginning and no end.  I see validity to this point.  I find reading online vs. reading an actual book to be very different experiences.  Our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter by the year and people want more and more information as fast as they can consume it.  Yes, they are different but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.

What will be the ultimate fate of newspapers?  I don’t think they will completely go away.  Newspapers will go through immense change which will rattle the industry through-and-through.  As the month’s go by the industry needs to continue to make themselves more adaptable and accepting to change.  Right now is not the time to be afraid of change.

How have newspapers fared on a more macro view?  Here is graph showing the total number of newspapers and circulation dating back to 1940.

Newspaper circulation graph